The Squatter Who Conquered Montgomery County: An Update on Glenmont’s Parcel H
Last August, we broke the news that Montgomery County had officially dipped its toes into the high-stakes world of Glenmont real estate by purchasing a 12,179-square-foot gravel lot located at 2301 Randolph Road. That's also known as Parcel H of the Glenmont Shopping Center. The county shelled out $452,000 for the 0.28-acre lot between Country Boy Market and Starbucks, intending in the short-term to use it as a construction staging area for a long-delayed HVAC renovation at the 4th District Police Station directly across the street. Long-term, the acquisition is part of the county’s Glenmont Redevelopment Program, a plan to acquire all or most of the shopping center’s fifteen parcels and then leverage the area’s status as a State Enterprise Zone for massive redevelopment.
Left is MCAtlas plat map of Glenmont Shopping Center, pin is Parcel H; Right is Google Maps
At the time, we reported that the taxpayers' new purchase came fully loaded with a vintage commercial vehicle graveyard, massive mounds of broken concrete and trash, and a scattering of old tires and machine parts. We wondered aloud whether the county would ever clean up what was undeniably the shabbiest lot in the shabbiest shopping center in Montgomery County.
Glenmont Shopping Center, Parcel H, August 2025 (Photo: Montgomery Fix)
As it turns out, the county didn’t clean it up. Instead, a local asphalt paving contractor of dubious repute laid claim to it and refuses to budge. The county’s response over the last year amounts to a slow-motion bureaucratic rendition of Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" skit.
The 311 Complaint and the Mystery Fleet
Spurred by civic duty and journalistic curiosity, a public-spirited resident (who, full disclosure, happens to be this publisher) filed an MC311 service request just three days after our original article ran. By late August, the complaint was formally funneled into the Department of Housing and Community Affairs (DHCA) Housing Code Enforcement division as case #194219.
When Code Enforcement Inspector Donald Goodman arrived on-site in mid-September to survey the property, he confirmed our findings: the lot was being actively operated as a storage lot and work space for a dilapidated private construction fleet. For weeks, Inspector Goodman played administrative telephone tag, leaving a string of voicemails for Department of General Services (DGS) representatives just to determine which county agency was technically in charge of overseeing the taxpayer-funded junk yard.
By October, the plot thickened and the real comedy began. During a routine re-inspection, Inspector Goodman discovered that the official Montgomery County General Services sign had been torn down. In its place hung a brand-new banner for a private enterprise, ConTech Pro LLC. The sign advertises “Asphalt Paving & Sealcoating” with the phone number (610) 441-1080 handwritten in two places.
Left, DGS placard; Right, ConTech sign. (Photos: DHCA Code Compliance)
Inspector Goodman managed to track down the company’s owner, Mr. Jose Chavez. Mr. Chavez explained that he was in the process of selling the company, planning to move his entire fleet down to Laurel on Route 198, and requested "an additional week" to clear his equipment and debris from the property.
It didn’t happen.
The Unabashed Takeover of County Land
Mr. Chavez seemed to have made some initial progress. By early December, Inspector Goodman reported that more than half of the commercial vehicles had been removed. Some of the broken asphalt, trash, and an entire "elephant" had been cleared out (full disclosure, we rescued the elephant).
This elephant with butterfly wings and a duck butt was in the 2002 Party Animals art exhibit.
Parcel H from the same perspective, 10 months apart. (Photos: Montgomery Fix)
But any optimism was short-lived. On December 11, 2025, Inspector Goodman arrived at the property to find a county-owned van idling outside the perimeter. Sitting inside were two bewildered DGS Facilities Management employees who had been tasked with managing the property.
They delivered a stunning update: Mr. Chavez’s 90-day grace period to vacate the premises had expired back in September. Rather than packing up his asphalt rollers, Chavez had allegedly cut off the official locks placed by the county on the chain-link fence, installed his own chains, and locked the government out of its own $452,000 property.
Squatter’s locks on Parcel H gate, May 2026 (Photo: Montgomery Fix)
The DGS employees informed Goodman they were currently heading across the street to the 4th District Police Station to seek "guidance" on how to legally get back onto their own land.
When Goodman subsequently called DGS Facilities Division Chief Gus Montes De Oca, the full scope of the county’s helplessness was laid bare. Montes De Oca lamented that the paving contractor had been a "thorn in his side" and was now officially squatting on county property. Why didn't the county simply hook up a fleet of tow trucks and haul the illegal dump trucks away? According to the Division Chief, the county could not get approval to remove the remaining heavy vehicles themselves due to their sheer size.
Dump trucks and cranes were too much for the county to handle. (Photo: Montgomery Fix)
The Police Station Across the Street
The 4th District Police Station sits directly across Randolph Road, literally within eyesight of the hijacked lot.
Building on left is MCPD 4D station; overgrown lot on right is Parcel H. (Photo: Google Street View, September 2025)
By mid-December, Montgomery County Police Officer Ember Kinney had opened an official incident report under CR 250055581 regarding the private occupation of government land. Officer Kinney assured Code Enforcement that the 4th District Commander and Lieutenant were actively "working on a solution to have him removed".
Apparently, that solution involves watching the invasive vines take over the rickety fence surrounding Parcel H.
The weed covered fence around Parcel H, as seen from the entrance to Starbucks. (Photo: Google Street View, September 2025)
Throughout the winter and early spring of 2026, the lot became the stage for a slow-motion game of vehicular musical chairs. Chains on the fence were replaced, locks were left open and then snapped shut again, and trucks were slowly rearranged inside the enclosure. In late February, Inspector Goodman caught Mr. Chavez inside the lot moving a large truck. Speaking through the links of the fence, Chavez reiterated that he was removing his equipment "bit by bit" and confidently promised to have everything cleared out "in the next month or so".
Jose Chavez's Multiple Business Personalities
Based on public records, including an unrelated squatter eviction suit, Jose Chavez appears to be connected to a loose cluster of paving, concrete, excavation, and construction-related businesses, several operating under similar or overlapping names, including ConTech Pro LLC, M & M Concrete Co., M & M Paving, M & M Paving Group, Asphalt Paving Group, and Asphalt Paving & Sealcoating. Trucks seen on the county lot bear some of these names, most prominently “M & M Concrete Co.” with a local 301 phone number. It advertises foundations, footings, poured walls, slabs, excavation, and demolition, which is consistent with the type of equipment and activity observed at Parcel H.
While the exact legal structure, licensing status, and relationship among the business names remains unconfirmed, the evidence points toward common control by an operation using multiple trade names and phone numbers, possibly with additional owners beyond Mr. Chavez.
Montgomery County warned citizens in 2025 about rising driveway paving scams by unlicensed contractors, specifically advising residents to check MHIC licensing, look for license numbers on vehicles/contracts, avoid unsolicited paving offers, and report suspicious activity to the Office of Consumer Protection (OCP). The county has a long history with this exact scam type. Filings against at least one of Mr. Chavez’s business identities appear in Better Business Bureau and OCP complaint logs.
A Monument to Bureaucratic Inertia
One full year into the Great Glenmont Land Grab, Parcel H remains firmly chained and closed off to the county. Looking for signs of progress, Inspector Goodman fired off a status request to DGS and the police department earlier this month. The response he received from DGS Facilities Manager Anthony Dorsey reads like a white flag of administrative surrender.
According to Dorsey, while Chavez has successfully extracted a few items, he is also actively "storing and adding equipment at his own leisure apparently." Recent county photo surveillance revealed that a brand-new Bobcat has mysteriously materialized, parked next to a crane that hasn't moved in a year. To add insult to injury, the defiant "Asphalt Paving & Sealcoating" company sign was once again boldly reinstalled on the fence. Dorsey admitted that DGS was last told the matter was resting safely “in the county attorneys hands,” adding a grimly honest conclusion: “Not sure the status or who is to proceed with action going forward.” As of this writing, there are no open or new legal actions filed by the county against Mr. Chavez in the judiciary system related to Parcel H.
The Bobcat is new to Parcel H. The hydraulic excavator with a telescoping boom hasn’t moved in a year. Taken May 2026. (Photo: Montgomery Fix)
The last punchline to this bureaucratic comedy arrived last week in an email from DGS Deputy Director Greg Ossont. It turns out that while four county departments were fumbling figuring out ‘who’s on first’ and then how to evict Mr. Chavez, back in Rockville the county’s decision-makers abandoned the project they bought the lot for in the first place.
According to Ossont, the HVAC project at the 4th District station has been "postponed indefinitely." Instead, the county will temporarily relocate 4th District operations somewhere else entirely while a brand-new station is built. Forty million to begin the work was just approved in the county’s 2027 Capital Improvement Budget.
Now, DGS says they have no near-term plans to use the site for staging or storage at all. They'll just save it to use as a staging yard for the new station's construction, likely still years down the line. Ossont tells us that “enforcement action is ongoing” and that it's his understanding “some of the vehicles and materials storage has been removed, although more is required.”
That's an understatement, for sure. Jose Chavez is still enjoying a free, securely fenced, centrally located commercial staging yard in the heart of Silver Spring, operating entirely at his own leisure, with no apparent plans to leave.
When we originally wrote that this lot was a fitting metaphor for the crumbling state of the Glenmont Shopping Center, we had no idea how accurate that metaphor would become. Montgomery County can dream all it wants about a multimillion-dollar redevelopment plan to acquire fifteen separate parcels from twelve stubborn property owners. Until the combined might of the DHCA, the Department of General Services, the County Police Department, and the County Attorney's Office can successfully defeat a single guy with an asphalt paver and a padlock, Glenmont's grand future will just have to wait.
